Outside the Vortex

Texas’ roads are paved in the typical American sense. Those who are lucky enough to have ventured beyond our sanctimonious borders understand exactly what I’m talking about. Apparently when you give up your freedom to the Great Socialist Oligarchy that is the European Union, you also enslave yourself to a world that does not adhere to the infinite regress of inner-city road construction and repair. They do that shit for keeps. You want road paved? OK, road get paved. Road no need new pave, maybe, 50 year. Not here though, no. America deliberately uses less than ideal construction methods for our roads. Why? So they’ll need repairing, stupid.

Anyways. Long story short. The PT Cruiser, the Objective Ideal of American engineering, had a crack in the radiator, internal temperature spiked, delayed us about an hour and a half. Two hours or so into the drive was a roadside Czech bakery, attached to, like, a Shell Gas station. The word’s Czech Bakery diffused my natural instinct to wonder about the quality of gas station baked goods. Why? Fucking poppy seed rolls. They didn’t have any, but they did have Poppy Seed Poundcake. Lo, and I didst consume the whole thing.

Oh, and for funsies. Waco looks decidedly un-murderous. In fact, in a sea of wheat fields and tourist traps, Waco looked quite promising. Just thought people wanted to know.

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Totally get why Mark Mitura loves Austin. Mark identified his prowling grounds as Guadalupe St. and also 6th St. And yes, Mark prowls. Especially when he suggests Guadalupe St., which is the Thin Red Line between a University and the Student Living buildings, and especially when this thin line houses mainly locations that serve alcohol and food, two things Mark can afford that college girls will sleep with him for. Did I mention Mark likes sex a lot? I really don’t feel like I’ve emphasized how that was the main part of why he suggested Guadalupe St. Oh, he really likes younger girls, and yeah, college-age is where the law conveniently draws the line-in-the-sand for Mark. And I don’t think Mark really needs to purchase food to get women to sleep with him. Mark’s classy. His tool kit contains mostly passive insults mixed with the furtive ground of alcohol and guilt. Ok, that did it. Phew, I think we’re all on the same page.

On the way to San Marcos, which is further south than Austin, I noticed a couple things that herald the apocalypse. No, not that John the Baptist free-based ergot off a hookers syphillitic sphincter apocalypse. I mean the Lou Dobbs, brown people ethnic pollution apocalypse. I saw a Cinema. Wait, sorry. I mean a Cine, like, a Spanish-only movie theatre, from the highway, like one of those 24-theatre multiplexes. Immediately adjacent, but on the opposite side of the highway, was a spanish grocery store. Coming from Pembroke Pines, this isn’t immediately disconcerting, we have those in Miami, too. But, I mean, shit. Stop confounding my premise that the second generation learns English despite their – and my own family history supports this – first generation parents/grandparents utter intransigence on the topic of speaking bloody English.

Somewhere down the road was something immediately disconcerting, but it took me a second to register. Americans are patriotic in an idiosyncratic sorta way. For example, above our auto lots, even Honda or Toyota – maybe especially Toyota – are tractor-trailer sized Stars and Stripes, whipping feverishly in the wind or, in most cases, burdened by their ostentatious size and persuaded only to hang limply in mock reverence to our forebears. This is a universally American feature.

Not in Texas, no, no, no. Instead, the only auto lot I saw had a giant, wait for it, Texas state flag. Perhaps you can sympathize with why I immediately recognized this as wrong, but could not process why I thought so.

San Marcos is a city of potential discovery, yet untapped. Get it? Like Magic Cards. Anyways. I collapsed in fury and exhaustion and was transported to a wonderful world of Texas in the morning. It was a feeling of unlimited foreboding because little did I know I had ventured outside of the Yuppie vortex of Austin-Ft. Worth-Dallas. Soon, I would have to brook the type of fever-brained delusion that I had been anxiously awaiting.